Real world disappears for athletes as group-think takes hold
THE modern athlete lives in a little bubble created especially for them. The dissenting voice, what some might call the adult in the room, has long been removed. So where, or who, is the cause?
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SOMETIME ago, you do the maths, a group of highly intelligent men got together in a room and came up with one of the dumbest decisions in history.
As knucklehead decisions go, this rated a full five coconuts. The decision these men all agreed to be a terrific idea was the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The man was US president John F Kennedy and in that room helping him make one of the dumbest decisions in history were some of the smartest men in American government.
Kennedy’s problem, in psychological circles, is a phenomenon known as groupthink.
It is the best explanation for how Kennedy thought the invasion was the correct play. Part of the reason offered for the war room’s inability to recognise the invasion as a bad idea was they were men of similar intelligence from similar backgrounds with similar outlooks on life.
Missing from inside the room was the dissenting voice.
If Kennedy and his war room can overlook the poor intelligence of his CIA and listen to the cheerleaders in his war cabinet telling him invasion was a good idea, enough to put the world on the brink of a third world war, then you can begin to understand how Steve Smith got lost in the combative world of Test cricket and thought roughing up one half of a cricket ball was not the worst idea.
The question is, how did we get here?
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That is nearly a third of the competition, an average every four years, which has got itself into a state where it believed it acceptable to cheat.
The modern athlete lives in a little bubble created especially for them.
The dissenting voice, what some might call the adult in the room, has long been removed. So where, or who, is the cause?
The problem with groupthink is it is entirely self-inflicted. Australian sport changed in the 1990s when pay-television brought big broadcast deals and players full-time money. As the players became professionals, the environment around them changed.
Organisations changed shape, attempting to create an environment totally dedicated to delivering the athlete’s best performance. NRL and AFL, cricketers, all of them.
So the dissenting voice was removed. In their place, organisations were filled with enablers.
Smith came out of high school and straight into this environment. He knows no different. The Australian cricketers travel to Sri Lanka and, rather than embracing the different culture, the staff do their best to take the environment with them.
The bubble.
The best way, they reason, to ensure consistency at the elite level.
Slowly, though, with no dissenting voice, the values inside the bubble get distorted. They no longer see the real world.
The Australian cricketers have been bully boys for years.
No longer clever or even designed to mentally unpick an opponent, their sledging basically hovered around incessant abuse. When they got busted their reaction was not to tone down the abuse but ask that the stump mikes be switched off. Then, when Quinton de Kock got the better of D ave Warner, Warner whinged he broke the rules. What rules?
Yet, inside the bubble, Warner was supported for being outraged.
How can you change if the bubble is all you know?
Some years back a former Parramatta player, retired several years, called the Eels needing urgent help.
The club had not heard from him since he retired.
Naturally, they were alarmed.
He said he was at the airport taking the family on holidays and was knocked back because his passport had expired.
He did not know how to get a new passport because the club had always done it for him. Who to blame?
Coaches want their players to remain in this state of suspended adolescence.
The last thing a coach wants in his team is an individual thinker, somebody with the intelligence to question the methods they employ.
They encourage groupthink. That way they control the entire roster as one.
And while it helps a team, all focused and on the same page and all that, ultimately it harms the individual.
Players reach the end of their careers and realise quickly they are not prepared for this new world. They are no longer the coach’s problem, though, so have to fend for themselves.
The Broncos circled Matt Lodge all summer under some misguided belief they were protecting him.
They unwittingly led him to greater problems.
This comfort zone they prefer inside their bubble is insidious. Ultimately it takes more than it gives. And our young men find out only too late.
When the All Blacks kept falling over in World Cups, management called in experts from around the world to try to unpick why the best team in the world kept falling in the biggest competition, the World Cup.
One guy got up and told them there are three states of being in sport. He called them Space Mountain, white water rafting and America’s Cup.
Space Mountain, named after the Disneyland ride, was the worst state. Like the ride, you were in a rollercoaster in the dark. You had no idea where you were going and no control.
When you were white water rafting you were in the raft but you had a safety vest and helmet and the paddle in your hands and the ability to work together to overcome the obstacles coming up.
America’s Cup, he told the All Blacks, was where they were. Everything was state of the art. While the All Blacks were having breakfast in the morning, somebody was packing their hotel room upstairs and loading it on a bus.
By the time they got to their next hotel, the bags had already arrived and been unpacked in their rooms. The All Blacks wanted for nothing.
That, the expert told them, was not the state they wanted to be in. They needed to be in white water rafting.
It seemed counterintuitive to the All Blacks. It then got explained that obstacles come in sport but given their “professional” treatment, their life in the bubble, they had eliminated the daily obstacles we all face and so had no concept how to handle adversity.
From that conversation, the famous All Blacks sweeping their own dressing sheds culture was born. They have not lost a World Cup since.